Yemen: the Unesco Heritage Slowly being Destroyed- Telegraph

 

The Unesco World Heritage Site Old City of Sana’a in Yemen is the latest of the Middle East’s ancient settlements to be ravaged by conflict

"When I went to see the damage the next morning, I found a hundred people watching and you could tell from their eyes that they were sad."

Ahmed Baider is a 22-year-old Yemeni tourist guide from Sana’a, who woke up last Friday morning to find the Old City’s rammed earth and burnt brick towers, laced in white, destroyed by bombs.

"When I heard about how they bombed the old city I cried. When I used to guide tourists there I was very proud of what my grandfathers did. The old city means a lot to every Yemeni."

 

 

"I think the damage in Yemen is as horrible as the damage in Syria and Iraq", he added, but he remained defiant that his country’s history "would not be deleted".

Mr Baider’s account is backed up by Mohammed Al-Qalisi, who has lived in the Al-Qasimi district for more than 22 years. Unesco calls the area, a world heritage site since 1986, a "magnificent complex".

"There is only rubble", Mohammed told Telegraph Travel from Sana’a, Yemen’s capital city. "It can’t be restored. It’s old heritage and can’t be rebuilt in the same architectural style."

The bombing on Friday morning was the result of airstrikes, destroying at least five of the historic buildings, which have edged the skyline here since the 11th century.

Residents said that the bombing was carried out by Saudi Arabia, although Brigadier-General Ahmed al-Asiri denied carrying out an airstrike in the Old City.

Heritage sites thousands of years old have come into the cross fire across Yemen, whose Roman moniker was "Arabia Felix", or "Happy Arabia", because of its lush, fertile valleys and mountains...

Local news reports said at least six people died in the Friday bombardment on the Al-Qasiri district of Sana’a, which has remained a working residential area throughout its 2,500 year history.

"I am profoundly distressed by the loss of human lives as well as by the damage inflicted on one of the world’s oldest jewels of Islamic urban landscape," said Irina Bokova, director-general of Unesco.

"I am shocked by the images of these magnificent many-storeyed tower-houses and serene gardens reduced to rubble. This destruction will only exacerbate the humanitarian situation and I reiterate my call to all parties to respect and protect cultural heritage in Yemen."

The latest damage comes just a week after several houses within the ancient quarter of Sana’a suffered damage and collapse as a consequence of shelling and explosions, including the Ottoman-era Al-Owrdhi historical compound, just outside the Old City walls.

Sana’a is one of the world’s oldest continuously inhabited cities, and by the first century AD was a centre on the inland trading route across the Middle East. The city is home to 103 mosques, 14 hammams and over 6,000 houses, all built pre-11th century, as it became a centre of Islamic education after the religion was founded in the 600s.

Abubakr Al-Shamahi, a British-Yemeni journalist and commentator on the Middle East, who lived in Yemen for a year until last summer, said that he thought the Old City would survive, but was worried about the country’s other heritage sites: "What pains me is to see some of Yemen’s other cultural and historical sites partially destroyed as a result of the fighting."

 

 

Indeed, Sana’a is not the only ancient site in Yemen that has sustained severe damage as the result of airstrikes.

Unesco reported on June 2 that damage had been caused to the Great Dam of Marib, which dates from the 8th century BC and is considered as a wonder of technical engineering. It said that inscriptions of the Sabaeans, an ancient people from the Arabian Peninsula, "may also have been affected by the bombing."

Yemen’s General Authority for Antiquities and Museums released a statement blaming the damage on Saudi airstrikes, and called on the international community to condemn the act and intervene to stop it.

Some 12,500 artefacts were threatened just the week before, when the National Museum in Dhamar was completely destroyed.

In Taiz, the pre-Islamic Al Qahira [Cairo] Citadel has been hit by multiple airstrikes since May 21 that have reduced it to a shell, according to photos and video posted on regional news websites and social media.

The bitter irony is that the Citadel, which sits on a rocky outcrop 180 metres above Yemen’s third largest city, had been undergoing renovations before the current conflict, in attempts to restore the complex that had been ravaged by previous wars.

Mr Al-Shamahi described the Old City of Sana’a as the country’s "architectural jewel". He said it is "somewhere you can get lost in because you’re constantly gazing upwards at the beautiful gingerbread-looking buildings."

He pointed out that the city is no museum piece, however: it is home to families and businesses that make it "a real, living, breathing city, with neighbourhoods and families that go back hundreds of years."

He said that the city had remained relatively well preserved until recently, as Unesco World Heritage status brought in financial support from foreign governments. But outside support has become less easily available since the beginning of the conflict. "Now, with no [Yemeni] government help, many of the poor families have not been able to use the sometimes expensive building materials traditionally-used in the Old City, which is detrimental to its upkeep," he explained.

The country has an intensly rich culture and long history: is believed to be the home of Balquis, the legendary Queen of Sheba and wife of Solomon, ruler of a kingdom referred to in the Torah, Bible and the Koran, whose remains can be seen around Marib in the west of the country.

Sana’a’s Old City is one of four World Heritage Sites in Yemen: others include the Historic Town of Zabid, with the country’s highest concentration of mosques, the Old Walled City of Shibam, whose towers have led it to be known as "the Manhattan of the desert", and the alien-like islands of the Socotraarchipelago.

The Republic of Yemen, which took its modern form in 1990, is one of the poorest countries in the Middle East, and a history of civil war and tribal tensions have made establishing a tourism industry difficult.

"We know that that long history is little-known outside the Arab world", said Mr Al-Shamahi. "The hope was always that we could one day show our secrets to the rest of the world, if things were to settle in the country, and use tourism to help our economy."

Tourism is non-existent at present. Mr Baider has had little income since 2011, when a surge in violence across the country caused the British Foreign Office to advise against all travel to Yemen, and the already limited number of international tourists dried up almost completely: "You could count the number of tourists to Yemen with your fingers," he explained.

Working for his family’s tour agency and hotel, the Taj Talha in Sana’a, he described how he used to take visitors to see the country’s heritage sites, meet the people, and sample its food. "All of my life working in tourism in Yemen, I didn’t meet any tourist who didn’t want to come back to Yemen again or send family or friends to see the beauty of Yemen."

British adventure tour operator Wild Frontiers sent tourists to the country up until 2011. Nigel Fisher, tailor-made manager at the company, said that clients "unanimously loved it. We never sent anyone there who didn’t name it as their new favourite country." He added that the old districts of Sana’a, with its "beautifully decorated medieval multi-storey buildings, is one of the most amazing places I’ve seen."

The Taj Talha hotel is now closed and Mr Baider’s father has left for Europe. He hopes that tourists will return: "Yemen is so beautiful, so tourism for sure will comeback."

He said that the country needs the support of the UN, Unesco and the World Trade Organisation to help Yemeni companies and the government rebuild the industry.

 

 

"To rebuilt tourism in Yemen our government should make people feel safe."

While the loss of human life in the Yemeni conflict can never be set aside, the damage and destruction to the country’s cultural and historical heritage is increasingly grave...

Source: telegraph